Ok, sometimes it's REALLY not meant to be

The sun setting on my holiday...

Sometimes all you can do is laugh. Sadly, I don't think I'll be laughing about this for a while. It's kind of hard to after TWICE spending quite a bit of money to fly over here just to see some damn tornadoes and coming up with nothing to show for it. But as my fellow tourist Rachael (who's quite a good country singer and could surely make a song out of this) says, mother nature's a bitch. Don't we all know it. But it has been very kind to mid-west USA. It's the first time in seven years there has not been a single fatality from a tornado in the month of May. In a perfect world there would be tornadoes AND no fatalaties. It's what all stormchasers hope for. Considering my luck the US government might start hiring me to travel here to ward off tornadoes.

But to today, where we almost drove to Mexico to chase a rotating storm, the only thing that looked like doing anything all day. Ironically it was again outside the forecast area for any storms. But we were 250km from it when it started and we tried to get there but we were no hope. The thing was I was confident and optimistic all day that today, when many appeared not to expect anything from the day. As you could have told by my previous blog post, I haven't exactly hidden my disappointment and frustration. For some reason things don't appear to be going my way at the moment. That said I still think I'm quite a lucky person having a job most people would (and I did) dream of, being able to go overseas and do things I always wanted to do (although this has been an epic fail) and having it pretty good living at home. But sometimes I still feel unlucky at times.

Luck wasn't with us yesterday. After a cracker of a day in Oklahoma on Tuesday, the next day looked even better with a moderate risk of severe thunderstorms and 10% chance of tornadoes issued by the National Weather Service for the same region yesterday. Absolutely nothing happened in that area during the day. We were far enough west of that area, in Texas, to be able to drive five hours to catch another storm in the northwest of the state. For some reason we stopped in some town for half an hour which meant the sun had already set when we got to this storm.

First we got to see some impressive mammatus cloud, so we were on a strong storm. It also looked strong on radar and was FULL of hail. We also saw the damaged it caused in Childress, Texas with softball-sized hail and a 100mph (160kmh) wind gust (a tornado was reported but it wasn't confirmed). A huge sheet of metal was thrown across the town from somewhere. It could have caused some damage. So we drove into it. I got a great video of all the lightning and hail despite the low light conditions. We were following Dominator 2 and the navigator Reed claimed to see a wall cloud and one of our tour guides Kevin a cone-shaped funnel, which didn't touch the ground. It was intense. Red van (I was in blue) even got a small break in the windscreen.

Mammatus cloud aka "breast clouds"

Post-chase conference - our vans and Dominator 2

All in all I've still have fun on this trip. We've covered more than 6000 miles (9600km) and 11 states (Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, South Dakota, North Dakota, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas), almost from Canadian border to Mexican border. I also had an AMAZING time with my California/Vegas/Arizona tour. I'm glad I got some encouragement to do something additional. I can't say the nice long holiday wasn't worth it. Although I will look forward to some proper meals (mum's lasagne), proper Australian beer and not staying in a hotel. I also made new friends from this stormchasing tour and my other tour I'll hopefully see again. I might give the US a rest next year though. I know a couple of my tour guides are certainly thinking of travelling over soon. I might be playing tour guide for them.

I'd say this will be my last blog about my travels until my next adventure, but don't desert me! I'm sure I'll find some interesting stuff pop into my head to keep this blog rolling. See you all when I get back home! I'm looking forward to telling you all about what I may not have mentioned in enough detail in this blog. Well, some of it...

PS - Please don't refer to my last two weeks as a tornado chasing tour. Not even for shits and giggles. I won't be in the mood for it. Stormchasing is fine. Or America trip. Tornado is off limits.

PPS - I still have a day left and we COULD be chasing a storm, so you never know, I could be changing my tune. I doubt it.

A nice photo to leave you with...